For this reason the Kádár regime favored Fábri over more controversial and experimental directors like Miklós Jancsó.

[8] At the 11th Moscow International Film Festival in 1979, he was awarded with the Honorable Prize for the contribution to cinema.

[9] He was known as a perfectionist who wrote, drawn and choreographed every scene to the most precise detail months before production began and never improvised anything.

His reputation as a rigid, tyrannical director was somewhat contradicted by his friendly and kind behaviour towards the British and American child actors on the set of The Boys of Paul Street.

Fábri made nearly all of his films based on literary material (novels or short stories) and wrote the screenplays himself.

In 1969 he played the role of prosecuted statesman Zoltán Dániel in his friend Péter Bacsó's cult satire, A tanú (The Witness) as his sole acting job.